House of Commons photoLost his last election, in 2015, with 31% of the vote.
Petitions June 16th, 2014
Mr. Speaker, I rise today to present two petitions to the House.
The first is with respect to the proposal to reverse the flow of the 40-year-old pipeline that runs between Sarnia and Montreal, known as line 9. The petitioners consider this pipeline and the reversal of that flow to be an urgent threat to the city of Toronto and its watershed, and call upon the Government of Canada to intervene immediately to stop the development of the Sarnia-Montreal line 9 pipeline.
Climate Change Accountability Act June 16th, 2014
moved for leave to introduce Bill C-619, an act to ensure Canada assumes its responsibilities in preventing dangerous climate change.
Mr. Speaker, it is my great privilege to reintroduce into the House, seconded by the Leader of the Opposition, a bill originally put forward by Jack Layton, the climate change accountability act.
Every day in this place we put ideas and different visions of our future in opposition to each other, and that is fair enough. We imagine and hope for very different things on either side of this aisle. However, on this issue, at this time in our history, it must be different.
We have before us the challenge of climate change, a challenge that calls upon us to look beyond ourselves, beyond this time and place.
Arresting climate change is the world's struggle. Everybody must play their part. However, we in here must lead. To fail to do so would be a failing beyond us as politicians and ours as a political system, a failing more fundamental.
All of us are entrusted with the care of the earth we inhabit and the well-being of all those who inhabit it. We need, now, to act upon that responsibility.
(Motions deemed adopted, bill read the first time and printed)
Georgian Bay Channel to Lock 45 – Port Severn June 16th, 2014
Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to have the opportunity to rise in the House today and speak to Motion No. 502, which calls on the government to consider the advisability of measures to strengthen and deepen the vessel navigation channel that provides access from Georgian Bay to the westerly limit of the Trent-Severn Waterway at Port Severn. What the motion is attempting to address is a bit of a hazardous part of the trip through the 386 kilometre waterway. The channel these folks are having to go through is rock-faced, quite narrow, and subject to swift currents from the operation of the locks and also from winds. The boats that travel through that narrow channel often get shifted around by both the currents and winds into rock faces and experience problems.
I am very pleased to speak to the motion for a couple of reasons. First, I spent three happy summers on the Trent-Severn Waterway as a summer student and another year on the Rideau Canal, again as a summer student. These were great jobs. Students, frankly, could not ask for better work. It was outside. It was well paid. That work went a long way in helping me through those years of university.
I have to acknowledge that I was not lock staff. I was an interpretive guide. On the Trent-Severn, I spent most of my time in Peterborough at the lift lock, the highest lift lock in the world, as I am sure all of us in the House know. However, I did get the opportunity to see the full length of the waterway, sometimes dressed as Boomer the beaver, sometimes just in my Parks Canada uniform. It was amazing.
I got to see the Kirkfield lift lock too, which is the second highest lift lock in the world. Who knew? I also got to see the marine railway up at Big Chute. These are engineering marvels, top to bottom, on the Trent-Severn.
My time on the Rideau was similarly spent as an interpretive guide and split between the blockhouse at Kingston Mills and the blacksmith shop up at Jones Falls, where, by the end of the summer, I became pretty handy at bashing out a few standard household items over the forge.
Neither of these jobs had the cool factor of lock staff, it goes without saying, since I had to dress as Boomer the beaver from time to time and run around in militia uniform firing off muskets in the dark. However, they did afford me the opportunity as a young person to get some insight into the history of our country, and indeed, into the history of the first nations and how they lived on these lands and used the natural waterways before the canals actually linked them. There are a couple of lessons in all of this that stand out for me.
We have before us a relatively modest motion. I think the member has priced it at $600,000 and change. Of course, given the numbers we deal with in the House, that strikes us as relatively small.
What I want to talk about is the issue of ambition, and this is why I support even this smaller proposal in the motion. It is the ambition required of nation builders and the ambition Canada once had to build the infrastructure that makes a nation. These waterways were carved out of some very difficult and unforgiving land, and they remain marvels, national historic sites, both the Rideau and the Trent-Severn. Of course, the Rideau has the UNESCO World Heritage Site designation as well. They remain, among other things, marvels of engineering. The lift locks along the Trent-Severn still captivate and perplex people. It is so simple, yet people stand at the bottom wondering how these things work and how they were built.
The waterways are but two examples, albeit outstanding ones, of an infrastructure that built our country. Laying railroad track across the country, across beautiful but hostile territory, through equally difficult and often deadly summers and winters, was no less a feat of course.
It is not just about the rural and remote infrastructure that built this country; it is also about urban infrastructure in Toronto. One need only look at the Bloor Street viaduct built almost 100 years ago. It was designed to facilitate mass transit at the beginning of the 20th century, long before we needed mass transit. Its upper deck was built to accommodate streetcars while the lower deck was built for rail transportation. It was controversial at the time because of the high additional costs. However, the bridge's designer and the commissioner of public works for Toronto at the time, R.C. Harris, were able to have their way, and the lower deck on that Bloor Street viaduct proved to save millions upon millions of dollars when the TTC, the Toronto Transit Commission, ultimately opened the Bloor-Danforth subway almost half a century later and they were able to use that bridge with no major structural changes.
Just down the road from my home in Toronto, and ever so slightly outside my riding, unfortunately, because I would like to call it my own, is the R.C. Harris water filtration plant. It tells a similar story. Early in the 20th century, Toronto was plagued with water shortages and unclean drinking water, so a plant was built in the 1930s to purify water. That is the R.C. Harris water filtration plant. It still functions today, providing almost half the water to Toronto and York Region all these years later.
It is interesting that Michael Ondaatje's novel In the Skin of a Lion tells the story of how in the 1930s water intakes were built more than 2.5 kilometres out under the lake, offshore, in 15 metres of water, and connected to the plant through pipes running under the bed of the lake. These were the kinds of ambitions we had at one time to build the infrastructure upon which we built great cities and a great country. It is forward looking, it is courageous, and it understands that infrastructure needs to be built now to serve as the foundation for a prosperous future. We are falling short on this. I talk all the time in this House about the impact of the lack of ambition of successive federal governments on our cities, but here let me restrict my comments to our waterways.
Recent estimates suggest that Parks Canada is letting our cultural, economic, and environmental assets go. Recent reports on Parks Canada and its assets suggests that there has been poor stewardship of its vast holdings, estimated in 2012 to require some $2.9 billion in deferred repairs. Deferred work on the Trent-Severn Waterway alone is estimated to be worth almost $700 million.
In a recent letter made public by retired managers of both the Trent-Severn and the Rideau Canal, they point to many problems emerging from the cuts made in the 2012 budget. Some of those cuts have been restored, but they have left a devastating impact on these two canals. The managers speak to the natural and cultural resources of the two waterways. They speak to all the complexity of uses of these waterways and the complexity of the watershed the waterways run through, and all the recreational uses. They challenge the government to ask itself whether it is really paying attention and respecting the heritage we have here.
The second point, just to conclude, is a more modern one. This letter points to this issue that these waterways are not remote anymore. They serve many functions and many people and fall under the jurisdiction of more than one government. That is to say that management is always a complex issue, and many important interests need to be served. The cuts to the hours of operation of these canals that flowed from the 2012 budget have had a devastating impact. As someone who worked on the waterway at one point in time, I know that the rolling crews through these locks is devastating to the economies along the waterway.
To support the motion, one thing I would like to see come out of it is greater consultation with all the competing and many complementary interests that exist along the waterway.
Georgian Bay Channel to Lock 45 – Port Severn June 16th, 2014
Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for Simcoe North for his speech and for bringing this motion forward to the House.
Having visited that area, I concur that the northern part of the Trent-Severn Waterway, up around Port Severn, is indeed stunning. I think that all MPs who represent people along the 380 kilometres of the Trent-Severn Waterway would agree that it is quite stunning, with each part of the waterway offering its own particular landscape and engineering marvels.
In light of the member's description of the waterway as a whole and the complexity of the watershed and interests that are involved along the Trent-Severn Waterway, from the different types of recreational use to the natural environment, can he tell the House what kind of assessments and consultations have been done to support the motion? For example, have economic and environmental assessments been done? Have first nations been consulted?
Petitions June 6th, 2014
Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to present a petition in the House today that arises out of the collapse of Rana Plaza, a garment factory in Bangladesh. When it collapsed, it killed 1,135 workers and injured another 2,500.
The petitioners draw the attention of the House to the fundamental right of all workers all over the world to work without fear for their safety and their lives.
Because the accord on fire and safety in Bangladesh is a critical mechanism for the safety of garment workers in Bangladesh, the petitioners call on the Government of Canada to endorse the accord--
Public Works and Government Services June 6th, 2014
Mr. Speaker, I did listen to the answer, but the thing is, I have heard that answer many times, in fact, years ago. The parliamentary secretary had to blow the dust off his paperwork.
The results of the Canadian government's study have already been reported in Washington. Government and industry officials have been leaking their version of events here in Canada. If Conservative spinners are willing to leak the report to the media and industry, why are Conservative ministers not willing to answer questions here, to stand by their decisions, to stand to account to Canadians here in the House?
Public Works and Government Services June 6th, 2014
Mr. Speaker, reruns are a sure sign that summer is here. We have seen this F-35 show before. The story where we do not need an open competition to get the best price. The story where we can buy 65 jets for $9 billion. There are never credible story lines and it is never credibly performed.
Here we are again with the Conservatives rejecting open competition in favour of sole-sourced procurement for the F-35s.
Could the minister at least tell us if the Canadian companies are guaranteed work?
Canada-Honduras Economic Growth and Prosperity Act June 5th, 2014
Mr. Speaker, because the Conservatives keep asking all the easy questions of my colleague, I am going to ask a more challenging one, in part because I got asked a more challenging one, and it is this. How does one make sense of the Liberals' policy and position on this particular agreement? Their position seems to be that values matter. They support the agreement, values matter, they will go in with eyes wide open. My colleague cited all the violations of human rights, democratic rights, and others in his speech. If that is not enough for the Liberals to say this is a problem, I do not know what is.
I am wondering if the member can reconcile the Liberal position for me.
Canada-Honduras Economic Growth and Prosperity Act June 5th, 2014
Yes, Mr. Speaker. I thank my hon. colleague for that question because it gets us to the point that the only type of engagement that the Conservative Party seems to know is one of trade. The third party seems to know that as well, except that it is at least wise enough to express care and caution and all the rest of those things.
There are many other forms of engagement, including trade with conditionality. This is the opportunity that Canada has with all sorts of countries around the world. If they are interested, if there is a prospect, if they are on a trajectory toward improved human rights and democratic rights for the citizens of that country, then there are opportunities to engage in conditional trade. There are opportunities to engage in other ways around, simply, development, development of state capacity for democratic institutions and all the rest of it. It does not have to be a trade-based form of engagement.
All of those things are open to us as a country to play an important role in enriching the citizens of Honduras, and by enriching I do not mean simply in monetary fashion, but enriching their lives in terms of freeing them from a society that is riddled with crime and danger as we have heard many times through the speeches tonight.
These opportunities are available to us. The NDP understands that one trade agreement, one template, is not sufficient. It is ethically bankrupt. There are opportunities for us to engage around the world in all sorts of different but meaningful, productive, and constructive ways with different countries.
Canada-Honduras Economic Growth and Prosperity Act June 5th, 2014
Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for that question and more so for the lovely statement about my speech. I am going to disappoint him now because I cannot accommodate that question with a response. After I heard the Liberal trade critic I was confused by that party's position and I do not think the confusion was just mine alone. It is a confusing position that those members take.
The little quote that I caught from the Liberal trade critic was, “We'll go in, eyes wide open”. My question is: what is it that she needs to see that she has not seen already?
I will go back to the Human Rights Watch World Report from 2014. The opening talks about Honduras suffering from rampant crime and impunity. It talks about police abuse and corruption. It goes on to talk about the supreme court justices being removed for unsatisfactory administrative conduct. It talks about attacks on journalists. It talks about rural violence. These are all things that my colleague from Toronto—Danforth talked about in his speech and in his personal experience during his time in Honduras.
If those things that are cited over and over again in all sorts of publications, including the Human Rights Watch report, are not enough to offend one's values and to say no, then the Liberal Party is as ethically bankrupt frankly as the ideological responses that come from the Conservative Party on the issue of trade.